xt7qjq0stw34_5786 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474.dao.xml unknown archival material 1997ms474 English University of Kentucky The physical rights to the materials in this collection are held by the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center. Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. W. Hugh Peal manuscript collection W. Hugh Peal correspondence with Mary Lanier Magruder text 43.94 Cubic Feet 86 boxes, 4 oversize boxes, 22 items Poor-Good Peal accession no. 11453. W. Hugh Peal correspondence with Mary Lanier Magruder 2017 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474/Box_74/Folder_1/Multipage32535.pdf 1956-1957 1957 1956-1957 section false xt7qjq0stw34_5786 xt7qjq0stw34 ﬁecember 3, 195%

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am? 530111;: 2113333. 13.13 abour. he}: writings .

Some young ﬁentu fy scholars are attempting to pre-
pare a complete biogﬂaph?aa and bibliographical censua of
Kentucky writers. The lt‘;r: . this effort is Dr. Lawrenee
S. Thompson 0f the Univerei“; ‘3 Kenﬁueky, an autherity on
ﬁeuthern literature and a algae persanal friend of mine. we
have run into almoet a blank wall on Mrs. magruder . 1 men~
aged to find a gooﬂ capy 0f ”Wages” in New York, but have
not located any other book.. 0f course E recall that she
published some poems, and perhaps short stoeies, in the Set—
urday Evening Post, but 1 have not been able to find any
copy of the volume of poems which E helieve She published.

1 have alwaye admired Mrs. Hagruder very much and
want to see her properly represented in the new week.
Any leads you can give us will be much appreciated.

I was delighted to see you, Mr. Jones and Jim again.

Cordially,

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Dear Mrs. Magruder:

Mrs. Parcy Jones of La Senter tellT me Th&t She
sTnt you a copy 0f mv TTTTTT letteT To TTT TBTTT getiisg
TTTormation abOLm yen aTd vour act ~~ TS a writer
for 13¢ in praparin.g a eznsus of x ‘xT T. writers. The
project is being: underT -LT by a grouf scholars at
The University of KTTTTZTy and cerTaTT other Schools in
The 3Tate, cue of whom, Dr. Lawrence S. Thompsen, is a
close friend. of mine. You may perhapg be familiar with
some of Dr. ThompSOT '9 Jerk on Southern fiction in general
and FTnTucky novels 3T pTrTiTulaT.

When I began T0 help in The prTchT I was amazed T0
discover how little definite information i cauld find about
yam and your worT. Yam: modesty must haze 1.3% you To auxin
advertisement. My own memory enabled me To TTTTT down T
good copy of ”Wages”s but I could TQT loaaTe the book 0f
poems_l seem to remember. I seem aiso To iTanTTr that
you published a goad many poems and STTTT stories in Ta-
Ticnal magazines, but I haven't been aTle To give The time
Teaessary far reseaTch i? the pariodicalg

We wculd be vary 3 Tateful if yTTc c:u.1d giva as as
much accurate information about yourself and your writings
as you can. We would 13” Re to have as T mwﬁjmum The type
at information that goaa into a ”Who 3 WhT” biggraphy and
as much additional data as practicable. For ingtance, I
have always been under the impression that your branch of
the Lanier family was related to Sid nay Lanier, and it
would be helpTul to have that verifieua

a”?

LEM-Edgar

Magy Lam: :Mr Ma

VUUE 30*

JMVM MEMM
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December 17, 1956

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that man m1 b1 andersLo ado onEy WEEK 1T1mﬁ~ ”'1 "l 1311» GE
° past 1 1.e., F15 33111113! and L1Fufi111 anvirammmnt. It
esyecially 1utara311mg to know 1.1. fvzgnssew Nﬁlliama
Exam the L111 family. 1 13v; 1:; ‘2 ~x1unmar 0E his
plays on the Few Eur; stage.

'3’

IE I can impose E11urther on yo Fr 1111.1ca, wauld 71k;
30mg addi“§0nal pQESQIE1m1 ﬂata about 31 1'ﬁ year immediata
E'F wily: dataa 9E birth and death; 11 Q1 names, including maiﬂw1
names of Eama111s; rasiﬁ-11ces and datas 0E change; public of-
Ezices held and m1.11tarw service, with $1135; and hobbies and
general interests. Th13e are marely indicative of the types
of Enformat'1on wn1ah culd ' useEulL and yam may be able to
thz1nk 0E much Eurtner de 1111: SpeaFing as a dab Fla r in liter-
ary ragearch, 1113113 nut 0E m” ac11v*1tia$ as acollector 0E
bani-rs and manugmr ipts, E can tell you that our agreatest probw
law is to 32" nanms and dates prec1sely Fortwd out and evalu-
ated. Even stanﬂard auEhmrEtEes, 31¢h as 1E ze d_cL10anry 0E Ba»
tiomal Biography, are Eull 0E absurd errors due to the failu11
of contributors ta set up accurate chrunclagias. Lucas mism
dates a number of Lamb's letters and falls into error as to
their significance Ear the same reason.

HARDY, PEAL, BARKER 8: RAWLINGS
Mrs. Mary Lanisr Nacgruder Februarle, 195?

.7.

0f your poems, 1 remember ” “loos s; H1” ery well, although
my memory had it recorded as “Michaela “. I am not certain about

the others, but have an impression tIVo 7 wall ”Awakenisg” anﬁ
“The Road to Ballymena“.

Do you have extra copi.es of your uueol_o,'ed goems and
stories which could be loﬂged at tho Library of the University
of Kentucky? Even If you do.not have 1*111 copies, It would be
helpful if the motoria 1 could oe borro.,‘ 3Eor photo copying and
ret11rn. This may not be practicable In the ease of oulky mater»
ial, *ut'wonl (or dlnly oe easy enough in the ease of the poems.
Ifeao 1lso saw the t too University is always delighted to receive
‘ifts of or1glosl manuscript as and letters. We of course understand
that original material is often piously preserved by the immediate
family ofa ” writer, but in a good many cases writers or their fam—
ilies actually prefer the saIety and expert oars founé only in
great libraries.

Your kind letter encourages me to make one further sugges—
tion, which you may think most presumptuous. Have you ever coo~
sidered an autobiography? Gr: if that be too taxing, a series
oI autobiographical sketcnes': As far as I know no one has ever
attemoted to record the farm ans village life of western Kentucky
of sixty and seventy years ago. You gave us some local color
in “Wages”, and Cobb, Holt and Warreo have treated the material
in fiction. As far as I know, however; no one has ever tried
to give us an exsot :1“"L"ﬂdﬂﬂ sscount. Easy of the ﬂew England
writers have done it. Why not Kentucky writers?

I often think of Paul and of his fine, alert mind. We dis-
covered together Darwin, Spencer, Jack London and many others.
What has happened to the other members of the MoGehee family?

It seems a long lifetime since I have heard of them.

Again let me thank you for such a wonderful letter.

Sincerely,

WHPIVN

l077 Flagler Avenue,
Jacksonville 7, Florida
January 3, 1957

My dear Hugh Peal:

My son Phil, a Senior Purchasing Agent for Hughes Air=
craft in Tucson, forwarded your ketter to me here in Jax. I
had flown from Tucson, where I had lived more than two years,
across the continent to this coasto Hence the delay in replying
to your kind letter, which seemed a voice out of a happy past.
I write very little now; had some poems an The Blue Moonvuuwon
a prizemnmand in The Stepladder, a magazine puhjlished at Knox
College, Galesburg. Illinois and presumably quit'highebrow,

Shall I give you a bit of Lanier history in which we have much
pride, a human weakness that has been justified by a few of

our family which inclides Sidney Lanier and Tennessee Williams,
whose real name is Thpmas Lanier Williams.

In 1576 the Count Jerome Lanier, a Huguenot, fled under perse~
cution from Rouen, France. Elizabeth of England received him
wwith honors and made him her court musicians

A lineal descendant, we know as Nicholas I, in our familybwas
sent by Charles I. of England to collest paintings on the cone
tinent as a nucleus fer the Royal Gallery. \This Nicholas brought
the aging Van Dyck to the court of Charles,whﬁ”did the Baby
Stuart known to all of us, and he qlso painted a picture of this
Nicholas for the kingo

When Charles lost his head under the axe, among his effects
sold at auction was this portrait of my ancestor, It then dis~
appeared from history through two centuries and more, until it
came to light once again in the attic of an old manor house in
England. Its ultimate fate is not known to me.

XXX ~~The gay and debonair son of the first Nicholas was a
courtier at therﬂissolute court of Charlesll. He accdpanied
other envoys to Portugal when they brought the poor little Prin~
cess of Briganza to be queen to the Merry Monarch. This Nicholas
II,was a patron of the arts; he loved music and Sam Pepys ree

cords hoevhe and Nicholas made music all through a day at Pepys'

house , with madrigals and airse This latter bit of gossip ~"tr

I most delightedly ran into one day in Chicago, when browsing.n_
in the smaik library; I came upon a large single edition of,V,7°
Pepys' diary. Again in some edition founu in the library at (of
all places), I found my Nicholas at a court function, but Pepys ,
whose spelling defied moderrllexicographers) had written our

rane as "Laneare’ “, a mistake corrected by the editor in “w”
footmnote.

As late as lbe the given name of "Nicholas" was common in the
family. When John Lanier settled on a grant of land near Rich»
mend , Virginia, in that year, his sons were John, Nicholas, Samfk—
son and Robert. My grandfater Lanier was a lineal descendant of
this Nicholas; my grandmother of Sampson.

,1.
CL"

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Nicholas married Priscilla Washington, a remote cousin to George

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Washington, and Sampson married her sister Elizabeth Washington.
These Washingtons were descended from a John Washington of
Surrey, Engla';"-"‘.=,~ who was a first cousin to the John Washington of
Northhamptonw ”and Sulgrave Manor, and the ancestor of the Pres—
dents ,’

The name Lanier means ”falcon, and our coat of arms bears
these bird-and is very beautiful when developed in the correct

colors 9

From the line of Sampson my grandmother who married Thomas Lanier~
her d§§E§¢ cousin, is directly descended, being =bout seaond
cousin to the poet Sidneu Lanier, On the distaff aide CTennesseh
Williams is of course far off kin, but the inheritance of a
flair for creative work seems bred in our bones. John Powell,
the talented violinist, is of the samQIIine,

Enough, perhaps too much, of the Laniers.

Wages is my only book. Submitted idthe first Harper Contestin

1923_~2t, it was chosen as a hm) ml of distinction from more?

than seven hundred manuscrip s. Itxthen became the runner—up

in the finals; of the three judges my book received one vote and
Nhrgaret Wilson‘s The Able MacLaughlins” took the prize with

two votes,

The Harper editors once wrote me my novel was magnificent, Eva

idently the public did not concur in this opinion as there

was never another edition although all of the first was quite

Dromptly sold. Copies are practically nonwexistent; you were

fortunate, since you desired the book, to find one,

I have never had a book of verse published, butynany of my
poems found their way into the anthologies, The favorites
were chosen from The Satevepost. George Horace Lorimer bought
most lyric verse and, need I say, the vers that is so out of
fashion tomday, Over a period of twenty years more or less I
made enough sales to The Post to fill a modest volume, but.va,
would read it now?

I was proud to be associatefin the columns of the Post

with Miss,.Millay, Charles Hanson Towne, Marjorie Pickthall, Dorm
othy Paul, Arthur Guiterman,Lord Dunsany , Robert Abrahams,

Mary Carolyn Daxdes, and others. I think Lord Dunsany and I

are perhaps the only survivors of that era in the writing of
lyric verse,

My bestmliked poems irrlude ”Nichaela, Colonel Bristow of
Kentucky, In April, The Road To Ballymena, Awakening, Might—born,
Emily Bronte, Lanterne Des Mort, The Wind, Long Ago,”

Will Farms of Columbia Univ. included Awakening in his book

of Drana and Poetry ior College us%:Dr, Cotton Noe also used
npre of my verses in his KentucknAntholgy of verse, than any other
noet——~with perhaps one exception. Night: Born was chosen by Ted
A.elone for his first volume of oetry ; and I gave pernuss;ou_
to many other anthologegies to use my verse, and never saw nor
do I remember the names or years in which the verses were used,
I sold short stroies long ago to Collier' s, the Post, Holland's,
and all the New Fiction people who assorted my light fiction,
An agent marketed some of my stories in England and Australia.
And after long years of sterile indolence, I am amusing myself
revising an old tale of the court of Charles II, and using my

ay blad of ancestor tr 1 ' :11' Lly.

Writing has always been an ave cation, shall I say escapeyfromthe

exioencies if village and farm life in the long ago when

our lives we.e an inescapable rou.‘1d of duties lever lightened

by the aids farm women have to da dZy? I liked to work , to en»

tertain , the share burdens} visit the sick, give comfort to

the heart mbroken as I closed the eyes of one death had mare

shaled out of lifeo To be a successful artist in any creative

work, one must not be diverted from the straight and narrow road

of dedication. Dillettantis wiin litera‘ure brings only he
~w¥&f%loafe and that is what our reward must be unless we forake

all else and follow the gleam.

The largest collection of my writing efforts are or were in the
western State Normal College: in Bowling Green. Kentucky. Or

so the librarian wrote U8 years ages I was a columnist on the
Sunday issue of The Paducah Suanemocrat for a decade and my
fulminations were copied thoughout the state when I happened to
ring the hell on some theme and editor liked»

May I ex -pla ain the general appearance of these pages by saying
there is no good typist or amannnsxsx amanunenisis available?
So~amy slightly arthritic fingers Dunish your patience with
these limping pages& I celebrated my eightymthird birthday on
December othmais that an acceptable excuse?

I am deeply appreciative of your interest and shall feel
warned in the cookies of my heart by being included with the
Kentuckians who have won right title to fame and remembrancee
As all my literary references, (orreSro ndences and Mss. are
left packed in a big old trunk in Tucson, I have had to rely
on memory, but I am sure of the accuracy of all I have written.

I am returning , perhaps soonvto Tucson for the desert has me in
its spell. I wondered how near you were to our town whose

growth now is alubst '.,; I have knowledge of most of the
little towns near Tucson and Phoenix to which capita al city we
made frequent visits as well as to Nogales, across the bordere

It is fine news to me that y ”1 :other is living; never ca n I fo~~/
get her kindness to my Aunt Myra, one of the bravest sould I
ever knew. I well recakk your visit to us; Paul was with youe
He has been gone so long; life gave him few breaks° Has im
been better with him now? I wondera

Thank you, Engh. Take out of these heltermskelter pages
anything you might find of interest or worth
Fairhiully yours,

The poem IS Michaela.

1077 Flagler Ave.,
Jacksonville 7 , Florida
March 1h, 1957

My dear Hugh Peal:

I hereby apologize for my long delay in replying to
your good letter. Several things came up to claim my
time, the worst being a bout with mine ancient enemy, neua
ritis of the nerve in my right arm, accompanied by bursitis in the
shoulder. I am happy to say the attack is much modified now.

When I left Tucson, I left many things behind to be sent later if
at all. As I flew in tosrﬁe East Coast, I brought the customa
ary forty pounds. Nhny of my Mss. were left in various containers,
but the ones I had planned to revise or cepy came in my suite
case with me.

My son in Tucson has been unable to find the collection of my verse
and no one can explain its disappearane. This Book of Verse, eathe

title~--contains all my published and unpublished poems. I

never can rensmber much of my verse any more than one can repeat

or fully recall a dream. Hence, if this collection in Ms. is lost,
I will have only the clippings pasted in various scrap-books, which
are stored in a huge truhk in Tucson .

Perhaps very little will be lost to the world should the cola

lection never be found, but I do value more than I can express

in halting words your interest in nwself. Of course my simple lyric
stuff is so out of fashion now I have felt that I had retreated into .
limbo of the forgotten.

At this time, with some projects immediately absorbing my time aniié$f_

and efforts, I can not gather up the allsembracing data of my 3;:

family but pigeon-hole it as a task tp be attended to when the $7”
time is mine to command. I have four children,on1y one of

whom, my daughter, married a Kentuckian-from Carlisle county.

Redmond married a Canadian girl, Ben a lassie from Kan.sas

City. Phil's first wife was from Tennessee, his second

from Boston, Mass' Sooeegetting the data of their birth,

parents' history is something else again: So be patient,

plese. ‘

I wrote a sort of autobiography ten years ago; sent it
to the Ladies Home Journal. There was a manuscript conferr'
once and Anne Einselen wrote me the script had extraordie
nary merit, a decision in which Hugh Kahler joined-~«but
they did not but i I do not know what the fault was so I
laid it by and now, after these years, have decided to try
to get an angle of correct vision on it.

A year or two ago I did a short novel or a long novella or
maybe it is an extended novelette. At any rate, it is in

a way autobiographical, the date beginning in 1888 and
the scenes are in Ballard county, Paducah, with old Clinton

2
College and the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago
in 1893 all incidermal to the tale. Those were the
years of my growing up, but I am positively not the heroine.
But all of those longmgone times, our ways, speech and
customs remain more vividly pictured in my mind than much
of a far wider world I have known for many years now.

Since coming out to Florida, I have written in a dramatic
situation which in this day of leaning backward toward intea
gration, may be too hot to handlee Even as late as your
mother’s girlhood, Southern girls and woman were never left
alone, for the Negro man was a subtle but terrible shadow
in the back of our thought.You will readily recall some
ghastly tragedies involving the black man and his white
victimso In the story I do pay tribute to the good kind
colored peeple we knew, and make Black Jess the exception
as ye evil, I have no real attack in my story, but only the
projected crime defeated with her only weapon, a redehot
poker in Aunt Jennie“s hands. Of course a white tramp-«eiea~
'stragglers" we used to call them, and I anzsure thr term
was a leftaover from the neesccounts in the wake of grmies
not yet a scote of years from The war Between The States.»~
could be substitued, but the point of fear would be dulled.
I am.now working on the final copy of this ta tale, inserting
the added “chapter into its proper place. I have just
taken on an agent as I have had none since Bob Hardy sold
for me in England, Australia, and here in the States as
well.
The title of story was Journal of Evelyn, but now The Diary
of Anne TFhank rather puts that into the discard-nasdunds
imitative. So I have thought that , for reason of some con~
nectien in the story, of changing the title to The
Wind In The Haw Tree. Do you remember the magenta beauty
of our black haw trees in the spring in Kentucy, or were
they gone from our woodlands beofore your boyhood? There
was one in my Grandfather Lanier's yard on the old farm,
and this is a certain tree mentioned in the tale.

Hugh, I am in my eightyafourth year, and except for the-opt

arthritis , am able to travel by car, plane bus or streanlio
ner. I read almost incessantly, enjoy good television, ,

and the best in movies. And believe me, these outapour-f—fr
ings are the result of those fine letters of yours.

Andw-~I have a lifeamask of self ,made twenty years ago

but good one. My family hates it, so I have left it with
Paul's mother; it hangs in her study in Jackson, Michingaari

Would anyone want it? Dr. Roof of Paducah made it ; it was

his hobby. He has one of Irvin Cobb and others.

This must end sometime, so why not now? And thank you for
your interest in the small contribution I have tried to
make to Kentucky slotteré With fervent wished for your
continuing success and much happiness in your daily life ,
I anlfaithfully yours,

/"
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